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Memorial DayAhhh, a nice long weekend, and not a moment too soon. Well, okay, I did go into work today for a few hours today, but I realized that I could make my life this coming week a lot more than a few hours' easier by finishing up some stuff today and getting it checked in. But otherwise, it was just me and Deb. We didn't eat out much this weekend, which is unusual for us (though we should probably strive to eat in more often). We made grilled chicken salads, and today I baked Cook's Illustrated's bacon-wrapped meatloaf. Saturday we had a fairly sedate day with a little shopping. Debbi went to do some of her own things, and I spent some time putting comic books up for sale on eBay (so feel free to bid if you see anything you like!). We saved up our energy for Sunday, when we drove into San Francisco to finally go to Golden Gate Park to see the Japanese Tea Garden and the Strybing Arboretum. The Tea Garden is the best I've yet visited in the area, nearly as nice as the one in Portland. The Arboretum - really a large set of botanical gardens - is a lovely strolling garden many acres in size, well-organized and labelled, yet with a much more natural feel than I'd expected. We also hit Haight Street for some shopping, and wrapped up the day by buying pastries and sitting in Washington Square Park in North Beach. Today we went for a bike ride in the morning, then made pancakes and sausages. Then I went into the office, and when we came back we mostly lounged around, watched some baseball, and made dinner. (Mmmm, that meatloaf is sooo good!) And of course gave the kitties lots of attention. Because, y'know, they deserve it.
 Debbi and I had a conversation at lunch yesterday which drove home - again - how I've lived in a different culture from many people for so much of my life. Debbi was raised Catholic, which is about as far from my own upbringing as you can get in a generally Christian society. Neither of my parents attended church regularly when I was a kid (so far as I know, anyway), and my Dad is about the most fervent atheist I know. I grew up more familiar with Judaism than Christianity, and when we learned about the Protestant schism in history class, I found the whole concept of arguing about the Trinity and transubstantiation to be completely silly - it was to me like arguing over whether fairies are 4 inches tall or 6 inches tall. Debbi hasn't been a practicing Catholic in years - since high school, I think. But her old church is one of the ones being closed down by the Catholic Church in coming months, and I think it's a little strange for her. She told me about how she'd try to get to Saturday mass every week, preferring it to Sunday mass, while I'd been mostly ignorant of mass at all as a kid. (Apparently my grandparents took me to mass once in Mississippi when we visited them. I don't remember it at all. Probably I was deadly bored.) Some people I know started going to church after having children, even if they were not religious beforehand. I suspect they do this partly for the sense of community, and partly to give their children the option to be religious or not. It's all a little baffling to me, inasmuch as I don't have any regrets about having not grown up in a religious atmosphere. I have some curiosity in Christianity in its impact on world history, but the nuts and bolts of attending church interest me not at all. Today being Memorial Day, we also talked about the holiday. Debbi's father is a Vietnam veteran, while mine saw his prime draft ages fall between two wars and so he missed being drafted for either of them (well, unless there's something I don't know). So Debbi and her family used to place flowers on graves every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, whereas to me it's mostly been just another holiday (unfortunately now one in which we're subjected to the cacophony of "God Bless America" during the Seventh Inning Stretch). It's not that I object to Memorial Day, it's just that I don't personally have anything to memorialize. I know at least one grandfather served in a war, but that's too far back for me to really feel it (particularly since I never talked to him about it). I knew some ROTC folks in college, but not well, and not still. So the holiday feels pretty abstract to me, particularly since the strongest feeling I have this year is the tragedy of hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq fighting a (literally) misguided war in the cause of making sure George W. Bush gets reelected. (Yes, you can guess how big a threat I thought Saddam Hussein's Iraq was before we invaded.) So while we should not forget their sacrifice, we also should not forget why they're really over there, and that, ultimately, it didn't need to be.
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